REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

Website Branding, Design and Development

Contents
Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 1
About ALIS ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Vision for the website ..................................................................................................................... 1
Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 1
Timeline .......................................................................................................................................... 2
No Guarantee of Work .................................................................................................................... 2
Confidentiality/Non-Disclosure ...................................................................................................... 2
Scope of Work ................................................................................................................................ 2
Development Guidelines and Site Specification ........................................................................ 2
Testing .4
Training ...4
Delivery, Launch and Sign-off ....................................................................................................... 4
Preparation and Submission of Proposals ....................................................................................... 4
Documents to be included with each proposal .......................................................................... 4
Website Branding, Design and Development Cost Proposal.......................................................... 5
Criteria ............................................................................................................................................ 6



1


Overview

Alberta Legal Information Society (ALIS and the Organization) is seeking proposals to
create a brand, design and develop a new website using a content management system (CMS)
such as Drupal that can manage large volumes of content in a variety of formats.

The overall purpose of the website is to make Public Legal Education (PLE) materials available
on a variety of topics, content languages and formats including PDF, audio and video and to
facilitate sharing this information with third party organizations and individual users.

About ALIS

ALIS is a non-profit organization established in 2012 with the purpose of developing a website
that will serve as the first point of access to legal information, resources and services in Alberta.

The high-level goals of ALIS are to:

Improve access by all residents of the province of Alberta to legal information thereby
promoting access to justice, whether they are self-represented litigants or not
Increase collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst public legal information providers
by encouraging links to the ALIS website and a system of referral and information
sharing designed to prevent duplication of efforts and information
Provide information in a variety of easily understandable and innovative formats

Vision for the website

ALIS intends to develop, in collaboration with its key partners throughout the province, a
website with distinctive branding which reflects the legal information and services it provides to
all Albertans. This branding, including the name, will be distinct from the corporate identity and
used on the website and on all promotional and training materials produced. The website will
use guided pathways that are easy to understand, informative and useful to Albertans seeking
answers and a starting point to address their legal needs.

Audience

The website, when designed, will be for all Albertans. Studies have indicated that the majority of
Albertans seek information pertaining to family law, relationship breakdown and income
assistance along with consumer, employment, debt and housing problems. Initially, the content
of the website will focus on family law. In subsequent phases, the website will grow to include
other areas of the law.

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Timeline

Development of the website should begin by the start of August 2014. The delivery of the
completed website including all the features listed in this document should be no later than the
end of November 2014. The successful bidder will arrange the scheduling to facilitate an on time
start and delivery for the website.

No Guarantee of Work

ALIS reserves the right to accept or reject any submissions that do not address specific areas
outlined in this RFP. The Organization also makes no guarantee regarding the value or volume of
work to be assigned and will evaluate all proposals based on the completion of the
documentation received, details of all requirements, company references and proposed cost. The
decision to engage the services of an applicant is at the sole discretion of ALIS. The successful
bidder will be required to enter a formal contract with ALIS.

Confidentiality/Non-Disclosure

Any information provided to bidders to facilitate submission of proposals is strictly confidential
and cannot be used for any other purpose. Likewise, ALIS will keep all information provided by
bidders confidential.

Scope of Work

I. Development Guidelines and Site Specification

The winning proposal must meet the following criteria:

Include an accessible content management system, which is easy to use for lay users to
produce content but allows expert users to manage and customize the site; preferably,
open source. However, other CMS solutions are welcome as long as they meet the
Organizations requirements.
Include a granular, hierarchical multi-role user system.
The selected system must have some facility to generate reports for ALIS staff to monitor
the status of the website for broken components, security issues, large influxes of and
broken links.
Branding and design that identifies clearly the purpose of the Alberta Legal Information
Society website. (The new website should be distinct from the ALIS branding and logo
and should not re-use their components. However, the website will need to be identified
as an ALIS website.) The selected developer will work with the ALIS staff and other
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stakeholders to create a unique logo and brand for the website. Should this capacity not
be available in-house it is permissible for the developer to cooperate with a design firm to
bid on this project.
Provide logo and branding in a vector or scalable format to be re-used by ALIS.
Provide major graphic elements of the website in an editable format such as adobe PSD.
The successful proposal should include provisions for at least three major rounds of ALIS
staff input on the designs and specifications.
The site should have a responsive design and decompose elegantly into each major screen
size breakpoint. The site should be compatible with the major browsers (please indicate
this in your proposal) and be built according to all current website accessibility guidelines
as well as W3C standards.
Reasonable accommodations towards low bandwidth users and users on mobile and low-
resolution devices.
The site must be clean and attractive, designed to accommodate a mix of text, graphics
and multimedia. This includes but is not limited to audio, photo and video.
The system should also be able to accommodate other interactive features that will
include step-by-step, guided pathways for users with questions regarding various legal
issues in addition to primary navigation.
The website must be able to accommodate the integration of third party software such as
online donation/payment, webinar, virtual assistant and survey software.
Any templates created must be open and editable by the ALIS technical staff.
A related template for the creation of electronic newsletters/mailshots congruent with the
design of the site.
Navigation should be simple and enable the user to easily return to their initial starting
point on the website
There should be an intuitive Search function developed as well as key sections clearly
visible such as Help, Frequently Asked/Common Questions and Contact Us
A mechanism for user feedback such as comments below content and evaluation and
feedback forms that send mail comments back to staff with anti-spam measures.
The ability for end users to easily share content to their social media outlets of choice.
The ability for staff to tag and categorize content to enable user discovery and easier
content management.
Multi-language support; minimally support for alternative language content but the
option for full interface translation would be an asset.
The template able to integrate Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS feeds and YouTube via
connections to ALIS content channels or through integration of embedded content.
Google Analytics Integration or equivalent tool.
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Once the site has been completed and accepted, ALIS will handle content creation, curation and
maintenance internally. Additional hours of support and maintenance may be negotiated at a
future date to enable an ongoing relationship between ALIS and the winning company after the
post launch period.

Testing

At major milestones, such as a feature complete beta, ALIS will run usability testing sessions to
gauge the effectiveness of the designs and may generate suggestions for change and refinement.

Training

Training of ALIS technical staff on the basic administration of the site and ALIS content staff on
the usage of the content creation tools is essential.

Delivery, Launch and Sign-off

ALIS will accept the final product upon successful testing internally and externally verifying that
the key features specified work as required for the website; an attractive design and brand has
been developed; key personnel trained; the site has launched and been made accessible to the
public. The developer will be responsible for installation and set-up of the website on a website
hosting server approved by ALIS and compatible with the CMS chosen. Developers should be
available for five hours post launch to address any emergent issues such as software bugs. This
should be included in the cost for development.

Preparation and Submission of Proposals

The specific criteria for evaluation are outlined in the list under the technical and cost proposal
sections below. This along with the ability to deliver a website with the key specifications
outlined in this document will determine the successful bidder.

I. Documents to be included with each proposal include:
A signed cover letter
A technical proposal
A cost proposal (An outline of the information expected is provided below)

II. The technical proposal should include:
Company Name (operating name, if different)
History and experience including examples of past, similar projects
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Project management approach
A detailed outline of your approach with regards to meeting ALIS technical and
functional specification requirements. Please justify the CMS recommendation.
Estimated timeline including milestones and checkpoints
Personnel who will work on this project -Please identify the team lead/project manager.
Should key personnel be unavailable please indicate the contingencies in place to ensure
adherence to the project schedule.
References Please provide at least three corporate entities for which this type of service
has been provided including their business name and address, telephone numbers, email
and the name of at least one contact person.

The cost proposal should provide detail for the cost of all services to be provided, including all
applicable taxes and fees. Please also provide a breakdown of fees according to major phases and
milestones in keeping with standard website project practice including:

Discovery and planning
User experience blueprint/specification
Design and development
Content layout, organization and development
Quality assurance
Delivery and launch

Website Branding, Design and Development Cost Proposal

Company Name: _______________________________

Please indicate below the proposed scale of fees to provide the services related to this RFP.
Please provide detailed costs to accomplish the project scope outlined. The budget must include
all design, production, software acquisition and licensing fees for the website.

Please feel free to include additional fields and more detailed information. The table below is just
a guideline of the key tasks and phases for the website development.




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An example of the cost breakdown is below.

Description Estimated Time
(days/hours)
Cost
Project discovery, planning and
design

User experience, technical
architecture and content strategy

Website build including
templates, back end
configuration according to
technical and functional
specifications

Quality assurance
Delivery, acceptance, launch and
post-launch support

TOTAL

Criteria
Proposals submitted will be weighted primarily on technical merit, secondarily on factors that
affect the long-term viability of the site, and financial concerns will be a tertiary concern.

Please indicate whether the proposed fees are negotiable.

Detailed milestones and a payment schedule will be negotiated and agreed in writing with the
successful developer.

As specified in the terms of reference submissions should be sent to the attention of:

Mr. Aftab Khan
Executive Director
Alberta Legal Information Society
Suite 2010, 10123 99 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3C6

Email: info@albertalegalinformationsociety.ca by 4:30 p.m. on Friday, July 18, 2014

Late submissions will not be accepted.

The successful bidder will be notified by Monday, July 28, 2014